Víkingar

Sagas of the Lost Ages

Chapter Two

The Trolls

2

JUN/14

• Olaf’s Hall. Returned to to their home, the party meets the Hall’s current keepers: Styr and the remainder of his men. After filling them in on what just happened and some brief negotiations—including promising Styr and company a cut of the ’Orkneygeld’—Yrsa was installed at the Hall as a hostage, and Styr and his man Olvir accompany the party and their contributions to the Jarl’s coming feast.

• Odd the Bent. They stop off at Odd the Bent’s crumbling hall, and found it lacking in food after feeding the assembled warriors of Rognvald and the Orkney men. The party charitably provides a few goats or sheep to Odd to stave off starvation.

• Steering Bay. The party then cuts east across the island, coming to Stjornavgr (‘Steering Bay’), an area with three large farms, all recognizing Rognvald as chieftain. They stay over at the hall of Aud, whose husband had already begun travelling south to the feast. She tells them of her grief over losing her son to the supernatural calamity that befell Rognvald’s camp near Odd’s hall.

• The Consultation. The party also consults the thrall-woman Brigid, who informs them that her knowledge is not up to the task of solving their draugr-problems. She recommends that, in the future, they talk to her uncle, an Irish priest, who lives on the peninsula north of the bay.

• Grim Discovery. The party travels south from there, coming to the single path leading through the mountains. At a choke point between hill and loch, they find a devastated homestead, its roof smashed in and smouldering.